Sleepovers, broken shifts and allowances under the SCHADS Award

If the SCHADS Award has a reputation for being complicated, this is where it comes from. Sleepovers, broken shifts, travel and allowances are the provisions providers most often get wrong, and recent changes have raised the stakes. This guide walks through each one, including the sleepover rules that changed from 1 June 2026, and how to apply them correctly.

Sleepovers: what changed from 1 June 2026

A sleepover is when a worker stays overnight at a workplace to be available if needed, rather than actively working the whole time. The SCHADS sleepover allowance is 4.9% of the standard rate, paid on top of any work performed during the sleepover.

The Fair Work Commission changed the sleepover rules on 13 April 2026, with the changes taking effect from each employee's first full pay period on or after 1 June 2026. The key points are as follows:

• A sleepover is not a break. The Commission has formally confirmed this. The hours of work before and after a sleepover are connected for some purposes.
• Shifts can be extended around a sleepover. By agreement, ordinary hours may extend to 12 hours within a shift that includes a sleepover, with a maximum of 8 ordinary hours in either the period before or after. Time worked beyond 12 hours is subject to overtime.
• Shift allowances are assessed separately. The work before the sleepover and the work after it are considered separately when working out the applicable shift allowance, so one part may attract an allowance while the other does not.

If you run SIL or any overnight support, review your sleepover arrangements and rostering against these rules now.

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Broken shifts

A broken shift is a shift split by one or more unpaid breaks, common when supports cluster around morning and evening routines. SCHADS limits how shifts can be broken and requires a broken shift allowance to compensate for the disruption. Get the structure or the allowance wrong, and you create both an underpayment risk and a fatigue and retention problem for your team. Check the number and length of breaks against the award, and make sure the allowance is applied every time.

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Travel time and kilometres

Disability support often means moving between participants or out into the community. Under SCHADS, time spent travelling between clients during a shift is generally working time and is paid, and workers who use their own vehicle for work travel are entitled to a per-kilometre allowance. These small amounts add up, and missing them is a frequent source of back-pay claims. Make sure travel time and vehicle allowances are captured in your timesheets, not left to memory.

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Other allowances to watch

Beyond sleepovers and travel, SCHADS includes a range of allowances that are easy to overlook, such as on-call, first aid, and various expense-related payments. Many are calculated from the standard rate, which means they also moved with the 4.75% increase from 1 July 2026. Build a simple checklist of the allowances that apply to your services and confirm each one is set up correctly in your payroll.

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How to get this right, consistently

The thread running through all of this is the same: these rules are detailed, they change, and they are hard to apply by hand at scale. The providers who stay compliant do two things well. They keep their people trained on how supports and shifts actually work, and they use a payroll system that interprets the award correctly rather than relying on manual calculation.

The Employment Hero and etrainu integration keeps both systems in step. Learners are created automatically from your Employment Hero employees, course completions sync back to Employment Hero, and your training hierarchy is built straight from your Employment Hero groups.

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Sources

Employment Hero

• HR and payroll for NDIS providers

Fair Work Ombudsman

Changes to sleepovers in the SCHADS Award 

• Hours of work in the SCHADS Award
• SCHADS pay and allowances

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This article is general information for NDIS providers and is current as at June 2026. It is not pay or legal advice. Always confirm current rules and rates against the Fair Work SCHADS information and seek advice for your situation.

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